Miscues costing Rick Santorum delegates

Only Mitt Romney has a full slate in Pennsylvania's April 24 primary.

March 21, 2012|By Colby Itkowitz and John L. Micek, Of The Morning Call

WASHINGTON — Even if Rick Santorum wallops Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania next month by winning every Republican vote on primary day, he's unlikely to gain the crucial support of all the delegates he could get.

Late last year, as Romney's backers were assembling slates of delegates in Pennsylvania, Santorum was camped in Iowa, traveling the state in a pickup truck with a skeleton staff, no money and little more than a dream of becoming a viable Republican presidential candidate.

Santorum's candidacy then was a punch line, and the idea that the former Pennsylvania senator would be relevant during his home state's April 24 primary was considered a political impossibility.

The lack of an early organization has haunted Santorum all year. In state after state, whether he would have won or lost the popular vote, he hasn't qualified for all the delegates available.

In Illinois, which voted Tuesday, he was eligible for just 44 of the 54 total delegates at stake. He didn't qualify for any of the 46 delegates in Virginia.

Every delegate is precious in a tightly contested primary that depends on securing 1,144 delegates to win the nomination. Underscoring that, the Romney campaign recently challenged Santorum over a single delegate in Wyoming and won.

Although the Santorum campaign has tried tirelessly to convince people otherwise, he is losing the math war to Romney. And that partly is because his campaign has failed to line up delegate candidates or file necessary paperwork long before any votes are cast.

"For an organization that was purely volunteer as we were in Illinois, Ohio and Virginia, it was harder for us. … It's amazing that we're on the ballots we are, given how difficult these rules are from state to state," Santorum said this week on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.

State Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre, one of Santorum's staunchest Pennsylvania supporters, said the campaign did make efforts to reach out to potential delegates to get them to commit to Santorum.

"The problem is, when you're running a low-budget campaign, you have to focus on the states in front of you, not 20 states in front of you," Corman said.

But it's particularly embarrassing for Santorum that in Pennsylvania, a state he represented in Congress for 16 years, he failed to utilize his connections to flush the ballots with old friends and supporters.

When asked about Santorum's delegate push, Brian Nutt, Santorum's political state director in Pennsylvania, said: "The No. 1 goal is to make sure you can get on the ballot, which is what the Santorum campaign really focused on."

In Pennsylvania, most delegates are elected on primary day. And each Republican delegate is free to support the candidate of his or her choice. So it's important for presidential candidates to field a slate friendly to their ambitions.

Delegates become participants in the Republican National Convention, to be held in late August in Tampa, Fla. Barring a change, the delegates will decide the party's nominee for president to run against Democrat Barack Obama.

The filing deadline in Pennsylvania was Feb. 14, which gave Santorum around six weeks after his stunning Iowa caucus victory to begin recruiting delegates. Charlie Gerow, a veteran Republican consultant who did the heavy lifting for Newt Gingrich on that front, said it's "difficult but doable."

"I think if they had put their shoulder to the wheel they would have done it," he said. "Quite bluntly, I'm surprised. I think it's very difficult to explain how that could happen in Pennsylvania."

One Pennsylvania Republican operative who asked for anonymity said Romney and Ron Paul were the most organized in rallying delegates. "I'll be perfectly honest with you," the person said. "The Santorum campaign wasn't involved in the delegate process whatsoever."

G. Terry Madonna, a veteran political analyst at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, said Santorum and his campaign will attempt to spin it that, as in other states, he's the grassroots guy the establishment is trying to stop. But in Pennsylvania, it's a harder sell because for a long time Santorum was a leader in the state Republican Party.

"If in fact he does not win the lion's share of delegates, it continues to show their lack of resources to organize, but you would think in Pennsylvania he wouldn't need a lot of resources, that he would have support in county organizations," Madonna said.

Because the 59 individuals who hope to attend the national convention do not reveal their candidate preference on the ballot, it's nearly impossible to say which candidate has done the best job of lining up a delegate who might nominate him at the convention.

In total, Pennsylvania has 72 delegates at stake. The state's two national committee members, Bob Asher of Montgomery County and Christine Toretti of Indiana County, and the GOP state chairman, Rob Gleason, are superdelegates. The chairman chooses an additional 10 at-large delegates to send as well.

"Based upon what I have heard, I think Gov. Romney will likely win the majority of the delegates in Pennsylvania," said Asher, a Romney supporter.

Based on recent polling, Santorum seems poised to win the state's popular vote next month. Nutt, Santorum's state director, said he hopes delegates will respect the wishes of the popular vote.

But in the end, all spin and small successes cannot supersede the importance of an early organization. While Romney has been gearing up for this moment since the day he lost to John McCain in 2008, Santorum is improvising as he goes.

"What it speaks to is it's very difficult to organize or catch up on the fly as Santorum has been forced into doing," said Josh Putnam, a delegates expert at Davidson College in North Carolina. "When you haven't established that elite-level support, it's hard to muster your efforts there when someone already has a head start."